Davis Cup: Prakash loses opening singles to Crivoi

Bucharest (Romania), Sep 19 (IANS) India’s Prakash Amritraj tried every trick in the book but could only take a set off Victor Crivoi before losing the opening singles of the World Group play-off 5-7, 7-5, 2-6, 2-6 to give a 1-0 lead to Romania at the Bucuresti Stadium here Friday.The way Prakash began it appeared he would breeze through the first set as he rushed the net to put away easy volleys. The hassled Romanian found it difficult to pass and the Indian was up 3-0 with an early break. Slowly Crivoi started getting measure of Prakash with his deep ground shots. Prakash tried to rush with poor approach shots and found himself in a no-man’s land as the Romanian passed him easily.

Prakash should have served out the set in the tenth game, but made elementary mistakes to drop serve. He was down love-40 in his next service game too and though he forced a deuce and saved in all four break points he just could not pull it off. The Romanian served the set out.

In the second set, the roles were reversed as the 158th ranked Crivoi had an early break and Prakash had to wait till the tenth game to level. Prakash held his serve before breaking the Romanian in the 12th game to level the sets 1-1.

Prakash seemed to have run out of fuel in the next two sets as the Romanian was all over the court to seize the opportunity. The 222nd ranked India started slowly losing grip over his game and was broken in the fifth game. After that it was a matter of time before Crivoi cruised through untroubled. To make matters worse for Prakash, he seemed to have stretched his hamstring and after that he simply went through the motions. All that Crivoi had to do was to wait for Prakash to make mistakes.